Social and Emotional Learning Difficulties of Refugee High School Students in an After-school Tutoring Program

Breakout Room H

School-aged children constitute a significant portion of the large number of refugees who have resettled in Canada in recent years. Due to the lack of cross-cultural competencies, a social justice focus, and transformative leadership skills, Canadian schools are often challenged to effectively address refugee students’ socio-psychological problems. Moreover, educational literature and policy, which specifically target Canadian refugee students, are scarce. To help with the issue, this study examined eight refugee high school students through an online after-school tutoring program and evaluated their performances in the five domains of social-emotional learning competencies: social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, responsible decision making, and social awareness. The two researchers participated in this study as tutors and adopted observation as the main approach. Findings of the study revealed that refugee students’ performances in these skills was not optimal, in general. Especially, there is a high demand in improving the refugee students’ self-awareness, self-management, and responsible decision-making. Most of them had good relationship skills as well as social awareness. Also, all the social-emotional learning skills connect closely with the refugee students’ academic success.